Fake news and kids

In it, 44% of tweens and teens said they can tell the difference between fake news stories and real ones. But more than 30% admitted they shared a news story online -- only to find out later that it was wrong or inaccurate.

"There was sort of a filter on what was available to kids," says Bob Thomas, a middle school education technology specialist in Massachusetts. He's referring to the traditional gatekeepers of old media.

"And now those filters are all off. Anyone can publish (anything) on the web. In a way, it's a sad thing."

One of them is a course created by the nonprofit, the News Literacy Project that teachers from California to Virginia are adding to their classrooms. It includes a 10-question checklist for identifying fake news.

Some of the red flags are easy to spot.

Is the story missing a byline? Is the headline in ALL CAPS? Is there excessive punctuation? Are they promising you something "the media" doesn't want you to know?

Some take a little more thought.

Who published it? Is the tone a little sensational? Is the content genuinely trying to inform you, or just trying to get you to see ads?

The Media and Society class in session at Midtown International School.

Patricia Hunt, who teaches government at a high school in Arlington, Virginia, say her students were already learning how to evaluate sources academically. So doing the same for news sources was a natural next step.

"Question what you hear. Question authority," she tells them. "Question the perspective. Question the sources."

Learning the difference

Teacher Munib Rezaie

At Atlanta's Midtown International School, six boys and a girl sit around one big table. Their assignment: Find a story that interests them, find what's false within it, debunk it and then create a public service announcement to fight back against its lies.

The students work independently, but they can't help but pass their computers around, sharing the articles they find too ridiculous not to laugh at together.

Andrew Boyacigiller, 12.

"I normally know the difference between propaganda and news," says Andrew Boyacigiller, a seventh grader. But he says the class has helped him discern between credible news outlets and ones that are just trying to match ads with eyeballs.

"I think (this class) is changing what news I would actually pick."

A few things to watch for

Look for unusual URLs, including those that end with "lo" or ".com.co"

Look for words in all caps, bold unsourced claims, and sensationalist images

Their media literacy teacher is a bearded young man named Munib Rezaie. The students have been studying fake news all week — what it looks like, why it's written and how it spreads. They use sites like Snopes and FactCheck.org to cross-check the stories they find.

And slowly but surely, they're forming a habit.

Ray Gipson is another seventh-grader in the class.

"I didn't really have a way of knowing what was what," he says. But now he double checks articles that look questionable. "Even being slightly (more) aware, it's a really big difference."